A Herzen Reader

13. To Flog or Not to Flog the Peasant? [1857]

Revolution in Russia 65 truth if some are not permitted to speak it and others are interested in keeping it hidden. The sovereign sees nothing from behind the beams and posts of the chancellery and the bureaucracy and the dust raised by soldiers on maneuvers; that is why the government, as it enters into the era of reform, is feeling its way along, desiring it and not desiring it, and those who might give advice are floundering like a fish on ice, with no voice. In order to continue Peter’s work, the government must openly renounce the Petersburg period as Peter himself renounced Muscovy. These artificial contrivances of imperial administration have grown old. Having so much power and, on the one hand, leaning on the common folk, while, on the other, on all thinking and educated people in Russia, the current government could perform miracles without the slightest danger to itself. No monarch in Europe has been in the position of Alexander II, but from him to whom much is given, much is demanded!… June 15, 1857 Notes Source: “Revoliutsiia v Rossii,” Kolokol, l. 2, August 1, 1857; 13:21–29, 496–99. The speech quoted in the opening epigraph was delivered on March 30 (April 11), 1856; it was not published but news of it spread quickly. In comparing the emancipation manifesto and the original address, Herzen later said that “the manifesto is unusually stupid, but the speech is unusually wise—they clearly scared themselves” (Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 25:340). 1. Peter allowed the peasants and clergy to keep their beards, but insisted that the gentry shave. Old Believers had to pay a beard tax. 2. From the verse cycle “Maxims.” 3. Herzen is referring to the ballad “Lenore” by Gottfried August Bürger (1748–1794).  13  The Bell, No. 6, December 1, 1857. The problem of corporal punishment was one that Herzen raised in a number of essays, and it was a central issue for many advocates of reform in Russia. (See Doc. 29.) In chapter 15 of Past and Thoughts, Herzen recalled what he learned in exile about the government’s treatment of peasants who objected to absurd orders and corrupt behavior by officials sent from Petersburg. During the inquiry, everything was done in the usual Russian way. “The peasants were flogged during the examination, flogged as a punishment, flogged as an example, flogged to extort money, and a whole crowd of them sent to Siberia.”  66 A Herzen Reader To Flog or Not to Flog the Peasant? [1857] To flog or not to flog the peasant? That is the question!—Of course one must flog him, and very painfully. Without a birch rod how can we convince a man that he must work for the master six days a week, with only the remaining time for himself? How can he be convinced that when the master takes it into his head, the peasant has to drag himself to the town with hay and firewood, and sometimes to hand over his son for the front hall and his daughter for the bedroom… Any doubts about the right to flog is by itself an infringement on gentry rights, on the inviolability of property as recognized by the law. And, in essence, why not flog the peasant if it is allowed, if the peasant tolerates it, the church blesses it, and the government takes the peasant by the collar and whips him? Do we really have such heavenly souls if we think that an entire caste of people, who share with the executioner the right of corporal punishment, and, having the advantage of whipping according to their own desires and for their own profit—and people they know, not strangers—should such a caste for reasons of humanity and heartfelt emotion throw away the rod? Enough nonsense. A few months back a ship’s captain, on the journey from New York to England, flogged a boy, not a rare occasion, it seems, for us. When the ship reached England, the sailors complained. The captain was brought to court and then hung by the seashore. That is how to break the habit of misusing the rod! A second instance. Three years ago some sort of officer quarreled in London with a cab driver; one word followed another and the officer struck the cabbie; the offended driver pulled out his whip and hit the officer across the face. The officer went to the...